The dynamic load sharing characteristic of the 2K-H-type planetary gear system with floating center gear is researched in consideration of the manufacturing errors, assembly errors, time-varying mesh stiffness. The nonlinear dynamic model is set up and solved by using Newmark's method. Then the time history of load sharing factor of the system with load balancing mechanism are obtained, and the effects of the floating clearance, the load torque, and the way of planetary gears assembled on load sharing factor are researched. The sensitivity analysis of load sharing factor is done by using finite differential method. The study provides useful theoretical guideline to the design of planetary gear system.


BACKGROUND
No reliable precursor of sudden cardiac death is known.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Holter electrocardiograms of 34 patients experiencing a cardiac event (event group, 20 deaths) were compared with 191 controls (no event group). The event group included 25 patients with ventricular fibrillation or acute myocardial infarction (AMI), and 9 with cardiac arrest due to complete atrioventricular block. The logarithms were calculated of the moving average of 5 successive values for the low-frequency component (LF), the high-frequency component (HF), and the ratio LF/HF of heart rate variability: ln(LF), ln(HF) and ln(LF/HF). A V-shaped trough appeared in the curve of ln(LF/HF) [sV-trough] or ln(HF) [pV-trough] before such an event in 31 patients in the event group. The V-trough was marked by a small variation lasting 2 h, an abrupt descent lasting 30 min, and a sharp ascent for 40 min. An sV-trough was observed in 22 patients before the onset of ventricular fibrillation or AMI. A pV-trough was observed in all 9 patients before the onset of complete atrioventricular block. In the no event group, an sV-trough and a pV-trough were observed in 10 subjects (5%) and 20 subjects (10%), respectively. The positive predictive accuracy of an sV-trough for ventricular fibrillation or AMI and that of a pV-trough for complete atrioventricular block was 88% and 100%, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
A previously unidentified V-trough of autonomic activity is a potential precursor of lethal events.


Presented during Session 3: Policy and Funding, moderated by Magdy Mikhail, at the 9th International Conference on Managing Pavement Assets (ICMPA9) in Alexandria, VA.


Circadian rhythms are recurring patterns in behavioural, physiological, and other parameters that display periods of approximately every twenty four hours. The molecular basis of the circadian timekeeping involves clock genes which act as transcription factors in a serious of feedback loops. Disruption of clock genes in transgenic models leads to dysregulation of the temporal architecture of behaviour and physiology. The master circadian pacemaker is the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) in the anterior hypothalamus. There are circadian oscillators in numerous brain areas and peripheral organs and tissues.
NF-κB is composed of dimers of members of the Rel family, including p65 (RelA), p50, p52, c-Rel and Rel B. NF-κB transcription factors are required for regulating cell survival and differentiation and also are important for inflammatory and immune responses. Dysregulation of this transcription factor has been shown to lead to inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. NF-κB is expressed in neurons and glia throughout the brain.
We hypothesised that the NF-κB pathway may play a role in the generation and perhaps the phase setting of the circadian rhythms in the master mammalian circadian pacemaker. Understanding the role NF-κB system may play in the free running circadian clock, may be of great importance in understanding the effects of ageing, neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration on circadian rhythms. We set out to examine whether there might be a role for the NF-κB system in the master suprachiasmatic clock. We have examined expression of constituents of the pathway across the circadian cycle in the SCN, we examined the effects of pharmacological inhibition of the pathway on circadian processes in vivo and in vitro and have examined whether there is evidence for circadian regulation of NF-kB-mediated transcription in the SCN. Furthermore, we examined whether the NF-κB pathway played a role in ageing.
Overall, we found no evidence that the NF-kB pathway is involved in the basal functioning of the SCN clock or in photic resetting. We do find some evidence that the NF-kB pathway may have a role in transducing immune events in the SCN. This data suggest that while the NF-kB pathway may be involved in circadian function in peripheral clocks, it does not appear to play a major role in the SCN.


The study of political parties and party systems is intimately linked to the development of modern political science. The configuration of party competition varies across time and across polities. In order to capture this variance, one needs to go beyond the analysis of individual parties and to focus on their numbers (i.e. fragmentation), their interactions (i.e. closure), the prevailing ideological patterns (i.e. polarization), and the stability of the balance of power (i.e. volatility) in all spheres of competition, including the electoral, parliamentary, and governmental arenas. Together, these factors constitute the core informal institution of modern politics: a party system. The relevant scholarship relates the stability of party systems to the degree of the institutionalization of individual parties, to various institutional factors such as electoral systems, to sociologically anchored structures such as cleavages, to economic characteristics of the polity (primarily growth), to historical legacies (for example, the type of dictatorship that preceded competitive politics) and to the length of democratic experience and to the characteristics of the time when democracy was established. The predictability of party relations has been found to influence both the stability of governments and the quality of democracy. However, still a lot is to be learned about party systems in Africa or Asia, the pre-WWII era or in regional and/or local contexts. Similarly, more research is needed regarding the role of colonialism or how party system stability affects policy-making. As far as temporal change is concerned, we are witnessing a trend towards the destabilization of party systems, but the different indicators show different dynamics. It is therefore crucial to acknowledge that party systems are complex, multifaceted phenomena.


Analysis of data from the American Life Panel shows that in the 2008 presidential election and multiple statewide elections in 2010, citizens exhibited large differences in their expectations of election outcomes. Expectations were strongly positively associated with candidate preferences, persons tending to believe that their preferred candidate is more likely to win the election. Committed supporters of opposing candidates regularly differed by 20 to 30 percent in their assessments of the likelihood that each candidate would win. This work contributes new empirical evidence on the false consensus effect, the empirical regularity that one's own preferences tend to be positively associated with perceptions of social preferences. It does so by using new measures of preferences and perceptions that enable respondents to flexibly express uncertainty. In contrast, earlier work has not allowed respondents to express uncertainty about social preferences. The present evidence concerns a setting that would a priori seem inhospitable to false consensus, in which voters have easy access to substantial common knowledge of social preferences conveyed by media reports of election polls. Delavande's research was supported by National Institute of Aging grant 5R01AG020717-05. Manski's research was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant SES-0911181.


We thank Prof. Muhammad Yahuza Bello, Vice-Chancellor, Bayero University Kano (BUK), Nigeria and Umaru A. Pate, Dean, School of Postgraduate Studies, BUK for their kind intellectual support. Abstract The importance of information and communication technology-related media awareness in health communication cannot be overemphasized. Perhaps the importance of ICT in health communication may not be well grasped without the prior understanding of the central position information and communication occupy within the health communication matrix. Over the last three and a half decades, HIV/AIDS pandemic has been one of the topical public health issues in Sub-Sharan Africa, especially in Nigeria. The application of ICT in combatting the scourge in the country needs no further emphasis especially because Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and the second nation with the highest population of HIV infected people in the world. Adolescence, literacy, media awareness and other social issues have been identified as significant factors aiding the spread of the scourge. Despite the progresses made in research in this area, issues regarding ICT-related HIV/AIDS media awareness among almajiri pupils in the country, particularly in the North-East region where the population of almajiris is the highest, has received little research attention. This paper proposes a conceptual framework designed on a mixed method approach for adoption in exploring the HIV/AIDS ICT-media awareness based on the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) analysis. The paper is expected to provide a strong conceptual underpinning toward an empirical investigation of this problem, with the aim of assessing the relevance of ICT in combatting the scourge among one of the most vulnerable groups in the society. Keywords: Adolescents, Almajiri pupils, KAP, Media awareness, HIV/AIDS, ICT and health communication, North-East of Nigeria DOI : 10.7176/NMMC/85-03 Publication date: November 30 th 2019


In this paper we present an auto-detection corner based on eigenvalues product of covariance matrices (ADEPCM) of boundary points over multi-region of support. The algorithm starts with extracting the contour of an object, and then computes the eigenvalues product of covariance matrices of this contour at various regions of support. Finally determine automatically peaks of the graph of eigenvalues product function. We consider that points corresponding to peaks of eigenvalues product graph are reported as corners, which avoids human judgment and curvature threshold settings. Experimental results show that the proposed method has more robustness for noise and various geometrical transform.


Designing and building software that is free of defects that can be exploited by malicious adversaries is a difficult task. Despite extensive efforts via the application of formal methods, use of automated software engineering tools, and performing extensive pre-deployment testing, exploitable errors still appear in software. The problem of cyber resilience is further compounded by the growing sophistication of adversaries who can marshal substantial resources to compromise systems. This paper describes a novel, promising approach to improving the resilience of software. The approach is to impose a process-level software control system that continuously monitors an application for signs of attack or failure and responds accordingly. The system uses software dynamic translation to seamlessly insert arbitrary sensors and actuators into an executing binary. The control system employs the sensors to detect attacks and the actuators to effect an appropriate response. Using this approach, several novel monitoring and response systems have been developed. The paper describes our light-weight process-level software control system, our experience using it to increase the resilience of systems, and discusses future research directions for extending and enhancing this powerful approach to achieving cyber awareness and resilience.


In this paper, a simple method for time-scale modifications of speech based on a recently suggested model for AM-FM decomposition of speech signals, is presented. This model is referred to as the adaptive Harmonic Model (aHM). A full-band speech analysis/synthesis system based on the aHM representation is built, without the necessity of separating a deterministic and/or a stochastic component from the speech signal. The aHM models speech as a sum of harmonically related sinusoids that can adapt to the local characteristics of the signal and provide accurate instantaneous amplitude, frequency, and phase trajectories. Because of the high quality representation and reconstruction of speech, aHM can provide high quality time-scale modifications. Informal listenings show that the synthetic time-scaled waveforms are natural and free of some common artifacts encountered in other state-of-the-art models, such as "metallic quality", chorusing, or musical noise.


Background
Social disability has long been linked with psychosis. However, at what stage
disability occurs, whether it exists for all individuals, and factors predicting outcome are
still under debate. Assessing social functioning in first episode psychosis (FEP) presents
a methodological challenge as many existing tools were developed for chronic
schizophrenia and are confounded with psychotic symptoms.
Aims
This study explored the prevalence and typology of social disability in FEP.
Different trajectories of social recovery were examined as well as predictors of
outcome.
Method
A sample of 878 individuals with FEP were assessed upon entry into Early
Intervention for Psychosis (EIP) services and followed up over 12 months. Social
disability was assessed using weekly hours engaged in structured activity on the Time
Use Survey (TUS). Recovery profiles were examined using two approaches: transition
between clinical and non-clinical cut-off scores on the TUS, and Latent Class Growth
Analysis. Baseline predictors of outcome were examined using ordinal and multinomial
regression.
Results
At baseline, over 80% of participants scored below the non-clinical cut-off of 45
hours per week in structured activity. Male gender and poor premorbid adjustment in
adolescence predicted baseline levels of social disability. Over 50% of participants
remained socially disabled following 12 months of EIP service provision. Social
recovery over the 12 month study period was predicted by baseline time use, gender,
Typology of Social Recovery from FEP J. Hodgekins
iii
ethnicity, age of onset of psychosis, duration of untreated psychosis, negative
symptoms, and premorbid adjustment in adolescence.
Conclusion
Social disability is prevalent in FEP, although a significant minority do not
experience any social disability and make a full social recovery. Where social disability
is present upon entry into EIP services it can remain stable over time. Social disability
may occur in adolescence, even before the onset of psychotic symptoms. The clinical
and theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.


Genomes of a given bacterial species can show great variation in gene content and thus systematic analysis of the entire gene repertoire, termed the pan-genome, is important for understanding bacterial intra-species diversity, population genetics, and evolution. Here, we analyzed the pan-genome from 30 completely sequenced strains of the human gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori belonging to various phylogeographic groups, focusing on 991 accessory (not fully conserved) orthologous groups (OGs). We developed a method to evaluate the mobility of genes within a genome, using the gene order in the syntenically conserved regions as a reference, and classified the 991 accessory OGs into five classes: Core, Stable, Intermediate, Mobile, and Unique. Phylogenetic networks based on the gene content of Core and Stable classes are highly congruent with that created from the concatenated alignment of fully conserved core genes, in contrast to those of Intermediate and Mobile classes, which show quite different topologies. By clustering the accessory OGs on the basis of phylogenetic pattern similarity and chromosomal proximity, we identified 60 co-occurring gene clusters (CGCs). In addition to known genomic islands, including cag pathogenicity island, bacteriophages, and integrating conjugative elements, we identified some novel ones. One island encodes TerY-phosphorylation triad, which includes the eukaryote-type protein kinase/phosphatase gene pair, and components of type VII secretion system. Another one contains a reverse-transcriptase homolog, which may be involved in the defense against phage infection through altruistic suicide. Many of the CGCs contained restriction-modification (RM) genes. Different RM systems sometimes occupied the same (orthologous) locus in the strains. We anticipate that our method will facilitate pan-genome studies in general and help identify novel genomic islands in various bacterial species.


Protein misfolding as a result of polyglutamine (polyQ) repeat expansion plays a crucial role in the development a class of neurodegenerative disorders. These disorders are characterized by expansions in unique proteins, but share one common factor: polyQ repeat expansions beyond a pathological threshold, usually near 35 Glns. PolyQ containing peptides and proteins aggregate into amyloid-like fibrils, in both disease states and in vitro. While recent studies of simple polyQ aggregation have led to the development of a mechanism describing the fibril formation pathway, the kinetic and thermodynamic roles of even small modifications to the amino acid sequence are unclear. The goal of this work was to gain more specific information regarding the biophysical roles of terminal charge and Gln repeat length in the aggregation mechanism of simple polyQ peptides. We found that increases in both repeat length and attraction between terminal flanking sequences led to enhancements in fibril stability and spontaneous aggregation ability. In general, mutations in polyQ sequences that enhance their ability to assume a β-hairpin structure (the proposed building block of polyQ fibrils), and to associate with each other facilitate fibrillization through a nucleated polymerization pathway with a monomeric nucleus. The data discussed here have made significant contributions to our understanding of the basic aggregation properties of polyQ peptides, and have implications that can be directly translated to polyQ disease pathogenesis.


In agriculture industries, workers are at increased risk for developing pulmonary diseases due to inhalation of agricultural dusts, particularly when working in enclosed confinement facilities. Agricultural dusts inhalation leads to unresolved airway inflammation that precedes the development and progression of lung disease. We have previously shown beneficial effects of the omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (ω-3 PUFA) DHA in protecting against the negative inflammatory effects of repetitive dust exposure in the lung. Dietary manipulation of pulmonary disease risk is an attractive and timely approach given the contribution of an increased ω-6 to ω-3 PUFA ratio to low grade inflammation and chronic disease in the Western diet. To prevent any confounding factors that comes with dietary supplementation of ω-3 PUFA (different sources, purity, dose, and duration), we employed a Fat-1 transgenic mouse model that convert ω-6 PUFA to ω-3 PUFA, leading to a tissue ω-6 to ω-3 PUFA ratio of approximately 1:1. Building on our initial findings, we hypothesized that attaining elevated tissue levels of ω-3 PUFA would attenuate agricultural dust-induced lung inflammation and its resolution. To test this hypothesis, we compared wild-type (WT) and Fat-1 transgenic mice in their response to aqueous extracts of agricultural dust (DE). We also used a soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitor (sEH) to potentiate the effects of ω-3 PUFA, since sEH inhibitors have been shown to stabilize the anti-inflammatory P450 metabolites derived from both ω-3 and ω-6 PUFA and promote generation of specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators from ω-3 PUFA. Over a three-week period, mice were exposed to a total of 15 intranasal instillations of DE obtained from swine confinement buildings in the Midwest. We observed genotype and sex-specific differences between the WT vs. Fat-1 transgenic mice in response to repetitive dust exposure, where three-way ANOVA revealed significant main effects of treatment, genotype, and sex. Also, Fat-1 transgenic mice displayed reduced lymphoid aggregates in the lung following DE exposure as compared to WT animals exposed to DE, suggesting improved resilience to the DE-induced inflammatory effects. Overall, our data implicate a protective role of ω-3 FA in the lung following repetitive dust exposure.


The similarity renormalization group (SRG) concept (or flow equations methodology) is studied with a view toward the renormalization of nucleon–nucleon interactions for ab initio shell-model calculations. For a general flow, we give quantitative measures, in the framework of spectral distribution theory, for the strength of the SRG-induced higher order (many-body) terms of an evolved interaction. Specifically, we show that there is a hierarchy among the terms, with those of the lowest particle rank being the most important. This feature is crucial for maintaining the unitarity of SRG transformations and key to the method's applicability.


In 1861 navigation was a vital economic and also a strategical resource of the newly-unified Italy. The Italian contemporary maritime historiography is very wide; nevertheless, the question of ports, considered as a whole, and in particular the issue of ports policy throughout the Liberal Age, have been completely neglected. With regard to the latter, given the lack of updated studies, the strongly negative interpretation expressed in the 1920s by the economist Epicarmo Corbino still remains the only starting point for a critical analysis. An extensive use, in addition to other sources, of the results of the international maritime historiography allows framing both issues within broader coordinates and better assess the specifics. The essay, after mentioning the impact of steam navigation in the framework of the first globalization, focuses on the condition of Italian ports from Unification to the eve of the Great War, also in comparison with that of other Euro-Mediterranean maritime countries. Thereafter, always with comparative references, the Author discusses the subsequent stages of the ports policy, proposing a reappraise of its criteria and effects.


Electro spinning technique is used to produce continuous nanofiber for different application area like preparation of scaffold, microbial filtration membrane, gas filtration membrane and controlled drug delivery system. The present study is an attempt to develop composite nanofibers that are biomimetic and bioactive and accordingly promote cell-scaffold interactions while being used as scaffolds for engineering tissues. The approach proposed involves compounding (hybridizing) two different polymers, both of which are biocompatible and biodegradable, but one is synthetic and the other is of natural origin. They are incorporated into one composite nanofiber from random blending or forming into a core-sheath structure via an advanced electrospinning technique. Composites in the form of nanofibers have been obtained by electrospinning technique. A gelatin/PMMA (Poly Methyl-Methacrylate) nanofibrous scaffold was prepared using Electro-spinning Technique to mimic both the physical architecture and chemical composition of natural bone ECM (Extra Cellular Matrix). With the help of electrospinning technique composite nanofibers were fabricated and it was found that with 45:55 gelatin:PMMA concentration was the most suitable composition for spinning to obtained fiber. This 45:55 ratio composite scaffold was then characterised using various techniques like SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy), FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy), EDS (Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy). The gelatin/PMMA nanofibers obtained under optimum composition of the solution are again electrospun by varying the feed rate values to see its affect on the fiber morphology. Thus it was found that with the feed rate 0.3 ml/h, the nanofibers formed had an average diameter in the range of 250-300 nm and had suitable properties mostly desired for bone tissue regeneration


In recent years, new aeromechanical problems have been encountered in turbomachinery. In particular, non-synchronous vibrations (NSV) in blades have been observed by engine companies and occur as a result of ∞ow instabilities. As a flrst step towards better understanding the NSV in turbine engine conflgurations, the two-dimensional shedding ∞ow about a circular cylinder is investigated in this study. The governing nonlinear, unsteady Navier-Stokes equations are solved using a novel harmonic balance method. This method requires one to two orders of magnitude less computational time than conventional time-marching computational ∞uid dynamic (CFD) techniques. In this paper, results are presented for a stationary cylinder in cross ∞ow and a cylinder with enforced motion in the low Reynolds number regime (47 < Re < 180). A unique phase error method is used to determine the shedding frequency and oscillatory lift for the stationary cylinder case. A relationship between Reynolds number and Strouhal number is determined and compared with existing computational and experimental data. The lock-in efiect for the prescribed motion case is observed, and results show that cylinder motion does not signiflcantly afiect the unsteady lift for cylinder oscillation amplitudes of 10% or less of the cylinder's diameter and the lift actually decreases for higher oscillatory amplitudes. This is signiflcant because it implies that it may not be necessary to couple the NSV aerodynamic solution with blade motion for some applications, which would require much less computation time than a fully coupled aerodynamic/structural solution. In all cases, the results agreed well with existing experimental and computational data.


Copyright © 2005, American Concrete Institute. All rights reserved including rights of reproduction and use in any form or by any means, including the making of copies by any photo process, or by electronic or mechanical device, printed, written, or oral, or recording for sound or visual reproduction or for use in any knowledge or retrieval system or device, unless permission in writing is obtained from the copyright proprietors. ACI Committee Reports, Guides, Standard Practices, and Commentaries are intended for guidance in planning, designing, executing, and inspecting construction. This document is intended for the use of individuals who are competent to evaluate the significance and limitations of its content and recommendations and who will accept responsibility for the application of the material it contains. The American Concrete Institute disclaims any and all responsibility for the stated principles. The Institute shall not be liable for any loss or damage arising therefrom. Reference to this document shall not be made in contract documents. If items found in this document are desired by the Architect/Engineer to be a part of the contract documents, they shall be restated in mandatory language for incorporation by the Architect/Engineer.


Psychology began as a 'backroorn' profession concerned mainly with developing assessment and research techniques, Although psychologists have extended their interest into many fields of clinical practice, there is still an emphasis on the scientific basis of practice, on establishing the reliability and validity of techniques used and on evaluating results, Clinical psychologists have a particular interest in short-term therapies such as cognitive and behavioural techniques, but they use a wide range of other methods including psychodynamic psychotherapy, group therapy, marital therapy, social skills training, milieu therapy and, increasingly, an eclectic approach,


Bilingual lexicons can be generated automatically using a wide variety of approaches. We perform a rigorous manual evaluation of four different methods: word alignments on different types of bilingual data, pivoting, machine translation and cross-lingual word embeddings. We investigate how the different setups perform using publicly available data for the English-Icelandic language pair, doing separate evaluations for each method, dataset and confidence class where it can be calculated. The results are validated by human experts, working with a random sample from all our experiments. By combining the most promising approaches and data sets, using confidence scores calculated from the data and the results of manually evaluating samples from our manual evaluation as indicators, we are able to induce lists of translations with a very high acceptance rate. We show how multiple different combinations generate lists with well over 90% acceptance rate, substantially exceeding the results for each individual approach, while still generating reasonably large candidate lists. All manually evaluated equivalence pairs are published in a new lexicon of over 232,000 pairs under an open license.


The luminous band around the horizon noted by J. Glenn in the first U.S. manned orbital flight is attributable to airglow. Dip-of-the-horizon measurements on the star γ Ursae Majoris showed that the band is centered at an elevation of 91 kilometers or somewhat higher. The edge-on brightness of the airglow layer was 6 x 10-7 candles per square centimeter.


Abstract : AD-283 450Div. 9, 1U (TISTA/GEC) OTS price $3.60 Hydronautics, Inc. Rockville, Md. DYNAMIC BEHAVIOR OF GROUND EFFECT MACHINES IN MOTION OVER WAVES, by J. D. Lin. Apr 62, 23p. illus. 6 refs. (Technical rept. no. 011-4) (Contract Nonr-318900) Unclassified report DESCRIPTORS: *Flying platforms Dynamics, ater waves, Damping, Pitch, G s flow, Pro gramming, Digital computers, Simulation, Mathematical prediction, Theory, Motion Aerodynamics, Ground effect. Identifiers: Ground effect machines. Dynamic motion in heaving and pitching of a ground effect machine (GE ) traveling over a train of sinusoidal waves is formulated on the basis of the small-dist rba ce theory. E ations of motion are derived as two third-order ordinary differential equa ions with coefficients hich depend on the characteristics of the achine and the mass flow into or out of the cavity under the achine. The coefficients are linearized at the equilibrium height; then, the solutions are obtained for the natural fre uencies, he d mping, and the steady periodic responses to motion over waves. It is found that a GEM wit peripheral and central jet curtains is generally stable for heaving and pitching, but the damping is rather small. The effect of coupling due to the discontinuity of mass flow coefficients is very weak and thus may be neglected. A program, prepared for the IBM 1620 digital computer allows study of the dynamic stability of a machine through variation of pertinent parameters, and also investigations of its dynamic response to various wave encounter conditions. Theoretical predictions for practical machines, which have in model tests experienced dynamic motions over waves, are presented and compared with experimental results. Satisfactory agreements are indicated in the natural frequency and response for heaving and pitching. (Author)


With textbook readers and digital downloads proliferating, it is easy to imagine a time when printed books will vanish. Such forecasts miss the mark, argue Jeffrey Schnapp and Matthew Battles. Future bookshelves will not be wholly virtual, and libraries will thrivealthough in a variety of new social, cultural, and architectural forms. Schnapp and Battles combine deep study of the librarys history with a record of institutional and technical innovation at metaLAB, a research group at the forefront of the digital humanities. They gather these currents in The Library Beyond the Book, exploring what libraries have been in the past to speculate on what they will become: hybrid places that intermingle books and ebooks, analog and digital formats, paper and pixels. Libraries have always been mix-and-match spaces, and remix is their most plausible future scenario. Speculative and provocative, The Library Beyond the Book explains book culture for a world where the physical and the virtual blend with ever increasing intimacy.


Get ready for Cisco's entry-level networking certification CCENT exam 640-822 If you're preparing for Cisco certification, your road starts with CCENT Exam 640-822 ICND1. This volume covers everything you need to know! You'll learn networking basics and how to work with Cisco devices, routers, switches, and more. With over 600 pages, plus dozens of review questions, this complete guide will help you make the grade. Discover CCENT certification find out what the certification involves and what to expect on the exam Networks and Cisco devices learn networking basics, all about ports, and how to configure interfaces and services such as DHCP and NAT Data routing explore static routing, dynamic routing protocols, and how to control the routing process with the routing table Be prepared learn basic troubleshooting steps and commands you can use on Cisco devices Cast a wider net become familiar with network security, security best practices, and wide area networks (WANs) Open the book and find: Basic facts of networking Introduction to TCP/IP Hints for using the Cisco IOS Step-by-step description of the routing process A guide to basic configuration Troubleshooting advice Exam tips for each topic An exam-objective mapping table Detailed examples of subnetting


BACKGROUND
Portfolios are effective instruments for assessment of teaching skills among professional teachers and have recently been adapted in medical education. However, scoring rubrics are needed to effectively guide assessors.

INTERVENTION
Portfolio assessors reviewed and made assessment comments about the resident-as-teacher sections of 11 internal medicine residents' electronic portfolios and discussed their assessments in an assessor group discussion. We performed qualitative analyses of written and oral comments. Major themes were identified, and member checking and triangulation with the literature was performed to evaluate the trustworthiness of the qualitative analysis.

RESULTS
Three faculty educators reviewed and commented on 241 uploaded e-portfolio documents accompanying reflections. Three major themes were identified: Application of Teaching Skills, Presentation Skills, and Insights as a Teacher. Themes and subthemes matched closely to several components of the conceptual framework of effective presentations formulated in Glassick standards for scholarly work, as well as themes found in assessments of professional teachers' portfolios.

CONCLUSIONS
Assessments of portfolios by experienced faculty educators appear to be useful for identifying many important facets of formal teaching presentations and may be useful for creation of a scoring rubric.


Abstract cDNA encoding an epitope tag was joined to cDNAs encoding the chicken Na,K-ATPase beta 1 and beta 2 and H,K-ATPase beta-subunits to allow recognition of these beta-subunits with the same monoclonal antibody during assembly assays. cDNAs encoding chicken Na,K-ATPase alpha 1, alpha 2, or alpha 3 and Na,K-ATPase beta 1 or beta 2 or H,K-ATPase beta-subunits were transiently coexpressed in mammalian cells. Subunit assembly was assayed by immune precipitation of alpha-isoforms with a monoclonal antibody to the epitope-tagged beta-subunits. Each of the chicken alpha-isoforms assembled with each of the Na,K-ATPase beta-subunits and the H,K-ATPase beta-subunit. Each of the epitope-tagged beta-subunits also assembled with a Na,K-ATPase/Ca-ATPase chimera that retained only 26 amino acids of the Na,K-ATPase alpha-subunit, demonstrating that all three beta-subunits recognize this same alpha-subunit assembly site.


This paper addresses the role of piezoelectric anisotropy in random ceramics of classic ferroelectric perovskites and analyzes the possibility of electromechanical enhancement by imposing various domain engineered states in random polycrystalline materials. It demonstrates that classical Mackenzie statistics of random crystallite orientations in an electrically poled polycrystalline aggregate favour their cumulative longitudinal piezoelectric activity in the class of ferroelectric rotators and disfavour it in the extenders. Further statistical analysis addresses the piezoelectric longitudinal effect of polar cone broadening in rotator-type ferroelectric ceramics subjected to poling in different polar polymorphs.


This paper explores the need for sustainable design with paper: how people really print and how we can take advantage of novel, reusable paper technology. We conducted two studies to investigate user's printing behavior. A key finding of the first study was that users often need an intermediate state between the electronic and physical forms of their documents. The second study examined users' predictions of which types of documents required this intermediate state. We formulate these findings into design guidelines that take into account: examination phase, transitions, cognitive and emotional reasons, and task- and event-relevant documents. Finally, we discuss how the different physical characteristics of reusable paper affect the user interface and could effectively support sustainable design.


Paired specimens of cerebrospinal fluid and serum were taken from 21 patients to estimate penicillin concentrations two to three hours after the last dose of a course of 14-21 daily intramuscular injections of procaine penicillin 0.6 MU. Of 10 patients treated with procaine penicillin alone, eight had no detectable penicillin and two had sub-treponemicidal concentrations (less than 0.018 mg/l) in the cerebrospinal fluid. Of 11 patients treated with procaine penicillin as above and probenecid 2 g a day by mouth, three had no detectable penicillin, two had sub-treponemicidal concentrations, and six had treponemicidal concentrations of penicillin in the cerebrospinal fluid. All 21 patients had treponemicidal concentrations of penicillin in the serum. This dose of procaine penicillin alone or with probenecid is therefore not recommended for treating neurosyphilis.


In many Western countries, women now reach educational levels comparable to men, although their income remains considerably lower. For the past decades, it has become increasingly clear that these measures of socio-economic status are influenced by genetic as well as environmental factors. Less is known about the relationship between education and income, and sex differences. The aim of this study was to explore genetic and environmental factors influencing education and income in a large cohort of young Norwegian twins, with special emphasis on gender differences. National register data on educational level and income were obtained for 7,710 twins (aged 29–41 years). Bivariate Cholesky models were applied to estimate qualitative and quantitative gender differences in genetic and environmental influences, the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to the correlation between education and income, and genetic correlations within and between sexes and phenotypes. The phenotypic correlation between educational level and income was 0.34 (0.32–0.39) for men and 0.45 (0.43–0.48) for women. An ACE model with both qualitative and quantitative sex differences fitted the data best. The genetic correlation between men and women (rg) was 0.66 (0.22–1.00) for educational attainment and 0.38 (0.01–0.75) for income, and between the two phenotypes 0.31 (0.08–0.52) for men and 0.72 (0.64–0.85) for women. Our results imply that, in relatively egalitarian societies with state-supported access to higher education and political awareness of gender equality, genetic factors may play an important role in explaining sex differences in the relationship between education and income.


Actinide isotopes are present in environmental samples at ultra-trace levels (236U concentration is quoted to be on the order of pg/kg or fg/kg). Their detection requires the resolution of mass spectrometry (MS) techniques, but only accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) has the sensitivity required. In order to perform the isotopic ratio measurements of actinides, such as 236U/238U, an upgrade of the Center for Isotopic Research on Cultural and Environmental Heritage accelerator (CIRCE) in Caserta, Italy, has been performed. The system was originally equipped for radiocarbon AMS measurements. The main difficulty of AMS measurement of 236U is the intense neighboring beam of 238U. Although most of the 238U ions are suppressed by means of magnetic and electrostatic elements, a small fraction of this intense beam can interfere with the rare isotopes. This paper reports the preliminary results of the 236U/238U isotopic ratio measurement limit (<5.6 x 10–11), aimed also to better understand the origin of background ions. For this purpose, a large 16-strip silicon detector providing spatial resolution has been used. In addition, calculations to assess the performance of the system obtained by adding a high-resolution time of flight-energy (TOF-E) detector are discussed.


A novel slowly growing member of the genus Sphingomonas, designated 1PNM-20T, was isolated from an abandoned lead-zinc mine in Meizhou, Guangdong Province, PR China. A polyphasic taxonomic study was performed to characterize the novel strain. Growth occurred on Reasoner's 2A (R2A) agar and peptone-yeast extract (PYE) agar, but not in liquid R2A or PYE media. Cells were Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, non-spore-forming, rod-shaped and motile with a polar flagellum (monotrichous). 16S rRNA gene sequence comparison showed that it shared the highest similarity with Sphingomonas carriPR0302T (97.2 %), followed by Sphingomonas spermidinifaciens 9NM-10T (97.0 %), Sphingomonas floccifaciens FQM01T (97.0 %) and other species of Sphingomonas (<97 %). Phylogenetic analyses clearly showed that strain 1PNM-20T fell into the cluster of Sphingomonas, and was most closely related to S. carri. The draft genome sequence was 3.76 Mb in length with a DNA G+C content of 69.8 mol%. Major fatty acids were summed feature 8 (C18 : 1ω7c and/or C18 : 1ω6c), summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c), C16 : 0 and 11-methyl C18 : 1ω7c, with C14 : 0 2-OH as the main hydroxy fatty acid. Ubiquinone 10 (Q-10) was the predominant respiratory quinone, and sym-homospermidine was displayed as the major polyamine. The polar lipids were composed of sphingoglycolipid, phosphatidylglycerol, diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylcholine, an unidentified phospholipid and an unidentified glycolipid. The phenotypic, phylogenetic and chemotaxonomic results supported the hypothesis that strain 1PNM-20T represents a novel species of the genus Sphingomonas, for which the name Sphingomonas lenta sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is 1PNM-20T (=GDMCC 1.660T=DSM 27572T).


Abstract The microbial-enhanced oil recovery method relies on microorganisms and their metabolic products to mobilize residual oil. It is environmentally friendly and easy to operate. In the past ten years, the microbial-enhanced oil recovery method has attracted a great deal of attention in both research and field applications. Previous reviews focused on microbial-enhanced oil recovery mechanisms, namely IFT reduction, selective plugging, gas production, biodegradation, and wettability alteration. This article summarizes the well-documented field cases in the past ten years. The objectives are to investigate the microbial-enhanced oil recovery mechanisms and application criteria based on field data. A total of ten field cases are reviewed, including cases in Malaysia, USA, Argentina, and China. It was concluded that most of the successful MEOR treatments were conducted for formations with a low temperature (below 55 ° C), low water salinity (less than 100,000 ppm), high water cut (above 75%), and low production rate. Reservoir permeability does not seem to determine the success of microbial-enhanced oil recovery. The current success rate for the microbial-enhanced oil recovery method stands at about 80%. With a better understanding of microbial-enhanced oil recovery mechanisms and field experiences, the microbial-enhanced oil recovery method is expected to prosper and the success rate will improve.


Although much attention has been paid to customer satisfaction (CS) as a leading indicator of firm performance, few studies have investigated the role of CS distribution across individual customers. With 10 years of National Customer Satisfaction Index (NCSI) data in Korea, we examine the relationship between the variance of CS and key corporate performance measures such as revenue, profit, Tobin's q, and stock return. There are three main findings. First, we confirm the findings of previous studies that the average CS for a firm is related to the firm's economic performance. Second, we find a moderating effect of CS variance such that the relationship between the level of CS and firm performance is attenuated by the variance of CS. Finally, the variance of CS is found to directly affect firm performance over and above the CS level effect. More specifically, the variance decreases sales and stock return.


Carral, David. PhD. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Wright State University, 2017. Efficient Reasoning Algorithms for Fragments of Horn Description Logics. We characterize two fragments of Horn Description Logics and we define two specialized reasoning algorithms that effectively solve the standard reasoning tasks over each of such fragments. We believe our work to be of general interest since (1) a rather large proportion of real-world Horn ontologies belong to some of these two fragments and (2) the implementations based on our reasoning approach significantly outperform state-of-the-art reasoners. Claims (1) and (2) are extensively proven via empirically evaluation.


Currently there are several models discussed to describe the formation of monodispersed silica particles. Monodisperse colloidal silica was prepared from tetraethoxysilane in mixture of ammonia, water and ethanol. Chemical system reaction permits the controlled growth of silica nanoparticles and subsequent condition of silicic acid in alcoholic solution. The molar ratio of NH4OH, C2H5OH and H2O has a significant effect on particle size and specific surface area of silica particles. The nature of particles was evaluated using X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and BET. The morphology of particles were determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy(TEM).


Abstract Attempts to expand the role of OR/MS into the broader community have been limited in part by the difficulties of educating non-OR/MS professionals concerning the intricacies of modeling. The purpose of this paper is to present and illustrate a new methodology called Modeling by Elaboration (MBE). This methodology assists naïve as well as advanced modelers in developing complex models through a process of systematically "elaborating" a fundamental model linked to a specified problem domain. The differences between MBE and other well-known modeling paradigms, such as top-down modeling and rapid prototyping, are discussed. We provide a framework for model elaboration that uses definitional, structural, and hybrid modifications. The MBE process is illustrated using a visual simulation package us applied in a retail-banking domain. Implications of MBE are discussed from three perspectives: learning, software developers, and the organizations for which the models were developed. For future research, we suggest conducting comparative studies of MBE versus traditional modeling approaches in controlled experimental settings, and applying expert systems technology to direct users towards the most appropriate elaboration schemes.


Management of Produced Water in Oil and Gas Operations. (December 2004) Chirag Patel, B.E., Nirma Institute of Technology, India Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Maria A. Barrufet Produced water handling has been an issue of concern for oil and gas producers as it is one of the major factors that cause abandonment of the producing well. The development of effective produced water management strategies poses a big challenge to the oil and gas industry today. The conversion of produced water into irrigation or fresh water provides a cost effective tool to handle excessive amounts of the produced water. In this research we proposed on-site produced water treatment units configured to achieve maximum processing throughput. We studied various advanced separation techniques to remove oil and dissolved solids from the produced water. We selected adsorption as the oil removing technique and Reverse Osmosis (RO) as the dissolved solids removing technique as being the best for our purpose. We performed experiments to evaluate operating parameters for both adsorption and RO units to accomplish maximum removal of oil and dissolved solids from the produced water. We compared the best models fitting the experimental data for both the processes, then analyzed and simulated the performance of integrated produced water treatment which involves adsorption columns and RO units. The experimental results show that the adsorption columns remove more than 90% of the oil and RO units remove more than 95% of total dissolved solids from the produced water. The simulation results show that the proper integration and configuration of adsorption and RO units can provide up to 80% efficiency for a processing throughput of 6-8 gallons per minute of produced water. From an oil and gas producer's viewpoint output from the produced water treatment system is a revenue generating source. The system is flexible and can be modified for the applications such as rangeland restoration, reservoir recharge and agricultural use.


The applicability of the white-noise method to the identification
of a nonlinear system is investigated. Subsequently, the method
is applied to certain vertebrate retinal neuronal systems and nonlinear,
dynamic transfer functions are derived which describe quantitatively
the information transformations starting with the light-pattern stimulus
and culminating in the ganglion response which constitutes the visually-derived
input to the brain. The retina of the catfish, Ictalurus
punctatus, is used for the experiments. The Wiener formulation of the white-noise theory is shown to be
impractical and difficult to apply to a physical system. A different
formulation based on crosscorrelation techniques is shown to be applicable
to a wide range of physical systems provided certain considerations
are taken into account. These considerations include the time-invariancy
of the system, an optimum choice of the white-noise input bandwidth,
nonlinearities that allow a representation in terms of a small number
of characterizing kernels, the memory of the system and the temporal
length of the characterizing experiment. Error analysis of the kernel
estimates is made taking into account various sources of error such
as noise at the input and output, bandwidth of white-noise input and
the truncation of the gaussian by the apparatus. Nonlinear transfer functions are obtained, as sets of kernels,
for several neuronal systems: Light → Receptors, Light → Horizontal,
Horizontal → Ganglion, Light → Ganglion and Light → ERG. The derived
models can predict, with reasonable accuracy, the system response to
any input. Comparison of model and physical system performance showed
close agreement for a great number of tests, the most stringent of
which is comparison of their responses to a white-noise input. Other
tests include step and sine responses and power spectra. Many functional traits are revealed by these models. Some
are: (a) the receptor and horizontal cell systems are nearly linear
(small signal) with certain "small" nonlinearities, and become faster
(latency-wise and frequency-response-wise) at higher intensity levels,
(b) all ganglion systems are nonlinear (half-wave rectification), (c)
the receptive field center to ganglion system is slower (latency-wise
and frequency-response-wise) than the periphery to ganglion system,
(d) the lateral (eccentric) ganglion systems are just as fast (latency
and frequency response) as the concentric ones, (e) (bipolar response)
= (input from receptors) - (input from horizontal cell), (f) receptive
field center and periphery exert an antagonistic influence on the
ganglion response, (g) implications about the origin of ERG, and many
others. An analytical solution is obtained for the spatial distribution
of potential in the S-space, which fits very well experimental data.
Different synaptic mechanisms of excitation for the external and
internal horizontal cells are implied.


Several intrusive measures of reverberation can be computed from measured and simulated room impulse responses, over the full frequency band or for each individual mel-frequency subband. It is initially shown that full-band clarity index C50 is the most correlated measure on average with reverberant speech recognition performance. This corroborates previous findings but now for the dataset to be used in this study. We extend the previous findings to show that C50 also exhibits the highest mutual information on average. Motivated by these extended findings, a nonintrusive room acoustic (NIRA) estimation method is proposed to estimate C50 from only the reverberant speech signal. The NIRA method is a data-driven approach based on computing a number of features from the speech signal and it employs these features to train a model used to perform the estimation. The choice of features and learning techniques are explored in this work using an evaluation set which comprises approximately 100 000 different reverberant signals (around 93 h of speech) including reverberation from measured and simulated room impulse responses. The feature importance of each feature with respect to the estimation of the target C50 is analysed following two different approaches. In both cases, the newly chosen set of features shows high importance for the target. The best C50 estimator provides a root-mean-square deviation around 3 dB on average for all reverberant test environments.


The field study of food webs and the processes maintaining them is hampered by the sheer complexity and unreplicated nature of natural systems. The animal communities in phytotelmata--plant-held waters--are a convenient exception to this generalization. Tree holes, bamboo internodes, pitcher plants, tank bromeliads, and water-retaining plant axils contain a rich fauna, principally of arthropods, which constitute more or less complex, highly discrete food webs. They are widespread and replicated. The explanations for the community structure observed in these systems may call on "bottom-up" mechanisms such as simple environmental limitations, competition, predation, and facilitation, or they may adduce grander "top-down" theories, which explore biogeographic, energetic, dynamic, or biodiversity-related constraints. The existence of the bottom-up mechanisms is well established in experimental systems, and their consequences may be apparent in naturally occurring food webs. Top-down mechanisms demand a more holistic approach and are more difficult to test either by pattern analysis or experimental manipulation. The synoptic explanation of community composition and structure demands a multidimensional approach best expressed as a heuristic "template." Phytotelmata represent nearly ideal natural instruments for further study of food web dynamics, and exciting opportunities exist for the development and testing of community theories through their manipulation.


Many software visualization (SoftVis) tools are continuously being developed by both researchers as well as software development companies. In order to determine if the developed tools are effective in helping their target users, it is desirable that they are exposed to a proper evaluation. Despite this, there is still lack of a general guideline on how these evaluations should be carried out and many of the tool developers perform very limited or no evaluation of their tools. Each person that carries out one evaluation, however, has experiences which, if shared, can guide future evaluators. This paper presents the lessons learned from evaluating over 20 SoftVis tools with over 90 users in five different studies spread on a period of over two years. The lessons covered include the selection of the tools, tasks, as well as evaluation participants. Other discussed points are related to the duration of the evaluation experiment, its location, the procedure followed when carrying out the experiment, as well as motivation of the participants. Finally, an analysis of the lessons learned is shown with the hope that these lessons will be of some assistance to future SoftVis tool evaluators.


The scrubbing of hands and forearms using antiseptic agents has been the standard pre-operative procedure to prevent surgical site infection. With the introduction of antiseptic agents, the need to use brushes for pre-operative disinfection has been questioned and it has been recommended that the procedure be abandoned due to the injuries it may cause to the skin. With the purpose to provide the foundations for the efficacy of pre-operative asepsis without using brushes or sponges, the objective of this study was to evaluate three methods of pre-operative asepsis using an antimicrobial agent containing chlorhexidine gluconate - CHG 2%; hand-scrubbing with brush (HSB), hand-scrubbing with sponge (HSS), and hand-rubbing with the antiseptic agent (HRA) only. A comparative crossover study was carried with 29 healthcare providers. Antimicrobial efficacy was measured using the glove-juice method before and after each tested method. Statistical analyses showed there were no significant differences regarding the number of colony-forming units when comparing HRA, HSB, and HSS techniques (p=0.148), which theoretically disregards the need to continue using brushes or sponges for hand asepsis.


This book has seven chapters. The first chapter is introductory in nature and it speaks about the migrant labourers. In chapter two we use Fuzzy Cognitive Maps to analyze the socio-economic problems of HIV/AIDS infected migrant labourers in rural areas of Tamil Nadu. In chapter three we analyze the role played by the government helping these migrant labourers with HIV/AIDS and factors of migration and their vulnerability in catching HIV/AIDS. For the first time Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps are used in the study of migrant labourers who have become HIV/AIDS victims. This study is done in Chapter IV. In chapter V we use Neutrosophic Relational Maps and we define some new neutrosophic tools like Combined Disjoint Block FRM, Combined Overlap NRM and linked NRM. We adopt these new techniques in the study and analysis of this problem. Chapter VI gives a very brief sketch of the life history of these 60 HIV/AIDS infected migrant labourers so that people from different social and cultural backgrounds follow our analysis. The last chapter gives suggestions and conclusions based on our study.


Anaplasma phagocytophilum is an obligately intracellular, tick-transmitted, bacterial pathogen of humans and other animals. In order to evade host immunity during the course of infection, A. phagocytophilum utilizes gene conversion to shuffle approximately 100 functional pseudogenes into a single expression cassette of the msp2(p44) gene, which encodes the major surface antigen, major surface protein 2 (Msp2). The role and extent of msp2(p44) recombination in a reservoir host for A. phagocytophilum have not been evaluated. In the current study, we explored patterns of recombination and expression site variability of the msp2(p44) gene in three chronically infected woodrats, a reservoir for the disease in the Western USA. All three woodrats developed persistent infection of at least 6 months duration; two of them maintained active infection for at least 8 months. In total, we detected the emergence of 60 unique msp2(p44) expression site variants with no common temporal patterns of expression site recombination among the three A. phagocytophilum populations. Both the strength of infection (i.e. pathogen load) and the genetic diversity of pseudogenes detected at the msp2(p44) expression site fluctuated periodically during the course of infection. An analysis of the genomic pseudogene exhaustion rate showed that the repertoire of pseudogenes available to the A. phagocytophilum population could in theory become depleted within a year. However, the apparent emergence of variant pseudogenes suggests that the pathogen could potentially evade host immunity indefinitely. Our findings suggest a tightly co-evolved relationship between A. phagocytophilum and woodrats in which the pathogen perpetually evades host immunity yet causes no detectable disease.


Author(s): Roland, Leslie | Abstract: Compound-specific isotope (CSI) analysis is rapidly growing tool in the field of ecology to assess the trophic position and foraging behavior of an animal. Only a handful of studies have examined the values and patterns of carbon and nitrogen amino acid isotopes ( δ 13C-AA and δ 15N-AA), and have primarily been done on plankton and other low trophic position organisms. Since AA data separate into unique biochemical groupings, much more detailed information is revealed than the widely used bulk isotope technique - such as source of diet (offshore vs. coastal), base of the food web, trophic positions, and an animals physiology. To examine the usefulness and power of the CSI method, we tested how δ 13C-AA and δ 15N-AA patterns and values appear in several populations of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) off the California coast, primarily comparing seals from San Francisco Bay (SFB) and the Channel Islands (CI).In Chapter 1, we compared bulk isotopes in captive seals from The Marine Mammal Center to wild seal populations. Our results indicated similar trophic transfer δ 15N values between predator and prey compared to other organisms. It concluded that weaner seals (l 1 year) from SFB and CI had recently weaned from their mother's milk, and were transitioning to a diet offish and invertebrates. Chapter 2 was the very first CSI study δ 15N-AA on marine mammals, where we examined the 'trophic' and 'source' AA grouping differences in captive seals. A smaller trophic enrichment factor (TEF) was shown compared to past studies on plankton. We hypothesize this is attributed to an animal's main form of nitrogen excretion (ammonia vs. urea), where urea-excreting animals exhibit this lower TEF value. Thus, we propose using a new multi-TEF trophic position equation to estimate the foraging ecology of wild harbor seals (Chapter 3). This equation provides more accurate predictions, suggesting they consume prey around 2.5 to 3 trophic positions. The coupled δ 13C-AA and δ15N-AA data suggest SFB yearlings (1–2 years) are nutritionally stressed, as they show higher than expected trophic position estimations. While seals in CI are consuming different types of prey (offshore vs. nearshore), but at expected trophic positions.


The presented paper deals with physical-geographical environment and landform patterns in the locality of Geodetic Observatory Pecný (GOPE) in the Ondřejovska vrchovina Highland. Landforms transience of the Ondřejovska vrchovina Highland by erosion and denudation processes is proportional to a high potential energy of the relief due to progressive tectonic uplift of the central part of the Bohemian Massif in the late Cenozoic. The Seradovský potok Brook valley between the Pecný Ridge (545 m a.s.l.) and the Sazava valley bottom (284 m a.s.l.) intersects several levels of planation surfaces and its source area erodes the etchplain exhumed during the Palaeogene. In the lower part of the valley, the stream deepened during the late Quaternary by approximately 50 m, whereas the relatively steep erosional slopes of the canyon-like part of the antecedent Sazava valley have a relative height of 60–75 m. In the rugged terrain of the GOPE locality, there are visible marks of regelation and frost processes, gully and fluvial erosion, slow slope movements and anthropogenic activities. Intensity of recent morphogenetic processes with its maximum in spring corresponds to combination of seasonal changes of air and soil temperature and at the same time to increased water content in the rock massif and in the weathered mantle. The suitable geodynamic location of scientific observatories on the Pecný ridge, stable from engineering-geological and geomorphological point of view, and in its near neighbourhood is menaced by increasing intensity of anthropogenic activities in the landscape.


The analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is a key building block of today's high-volume systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). Built-in-self-test (BIST) is the most promising solution to testing deeply-embedded ADCs. Cost-effective stimulus source with on-chip integrability has been viewed as the bottleneck of ADC BIST, and consequentially the bottleneck of SoC BIST and BIST-based self-calibration. The deterministic dynamic element matching (DDEM) technique has been proposed as a solution to this problem.
In this work, rigorous theoretical analysis is presented to show the performance of a DDEM digital-to-analog converter (DAC) as an ADC linearity test stimulus source. Guided by the insight obtained this analysis, a systematic approach for cost-effective DDEM DAC design is proposed. Two generations of DDEM DACs have been designed, fabricated, and measured. 12-bit equivalent linearity was achieved from the first DDEM DAC with 8-bit apparent resolution and less than 5-bit raw linearity after systematic error compensation. The achieved 12-bit linearity outperforms any on-chip stimulus source in literature. Based on the first design, a new DDEM DAC with 12-bit apparent resolution, 10-bit raw linearity, and 9-bit DDEM switching was designed with improved design technique. This DAC was fabricated in standard 0.5-pm CMOS technology with a core die area of 2 mm2. Clear ramp signals could be observed on an oscilloscope when the DDEM DAC was clocked at 100 MHz. Laboratory testing results confirmed that the new DDEM DAC achieved at least a 16-bit equivalent linearity; this was limited by the available instrumentation, which has 18-bit linearity. It outperforms any previously reported on-chip stimulus source in terms of ADC BIST performance by 5 bits. The robust performance, low cost, and short design cycle for on-chip implementation make DDEM an enabling technology for SoC BIST and self-calibration.
Two new approaches based on DDEM are developed to further boost the die area efficiency, improving the basic DDEM approach. The first is termed segmented DDEM, and the second is dither-incorporated DDEM (DiDDEM). It has been shown through mathematical analysis and simulation that these can maintain the performance of the basic DDEM approach while greatly reducing the implementation cost.


Financial inclusion has become the focus of economic policymaking worldwide. Increasing the accessibility of the weaker group of the society to formal financial services would not only serve at the individual level but will also benefit at the national level. This study aims to initially construct a new financial inclusion index for 43 developing countries based on a multidimensional approach, using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), using three dimensions; access to, usage of, and quality of financial services. Secondly, a dynamic two-step system, Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), is applied to empirically assess the impact of financial inclusion on the unemployment rate of 35 developing countries for the sample period from 2009 to 2018. The study established that financial inclusion has an impact on decreasing the unemployment rate in developing countries. The empirical findings suggest that an increase in the level of financial inclusion in developing countries decreases their unemployment rate. Moreover, the level of education, inflation rate, and economic growth have a significant negative impact on the unemployment rate. On the other hand, panel Granger Causality test was employed and indicated that there is a bi-directional causality between financial inclusion and unemployment rate.


PURPOSE
Patients with breast cancer metastasis to the sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) generally undergo completion axillary lymph node dissection (cALND), either concurrently with SLN biopsy or at a second procedure. The impact of the timing of cALND on pathologic results and complications in these patients has not been examined.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We examined outcomes from SLN-positive patients in American College of Surgeons Oncology Group (ACOSOG) trials Z0010 and Z0011. Pathologic data examined included primary tumor characteristics, total number of SLNs recovered, positive SLN(s) and non-SLN(s) identified. Complications assessed included axillary seroma, paresthesia, arm morbidity and range of motion, and lymphedema.

RESULTS
A total of 1,003 assessable patients with SLN metastasis had immediate (n = 425) or delayed (n = 578) cALND. The median number of SLNs and axillary LNs removed were the same between groups. Patients who had immediate cALND more often had larger tumors, SLN metastasis identified intraoperatively, two or more positive SLNs, and higher pathologic N stage. Axillary paresthesia, seroma, and impaired extremity range of motion were more common in the immediate group during the early postoperative period, but not at later time points. There was no difference in lymphedema at any time point.

CONCLUSION
In ACOSOG trials Z0010 and Z0011, LN recovery and long-term complications were similar after either delayed or immediate cALND for patients with metastasis to SLNs. Patients who undergo immediate cALND experience more short-term morbidity. With respect to staging and complications, there is no clear detriment for patients with a positive SLN who undergo a second procedure for cALND.


With an advent of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and attempts to use them as devices to collect information about terrain, the discussion about the quality of derived products and possibilities of their further use in geomatics applications has begun. One of the desired outputs is the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) which represents the bare-earth surface. To obtain DEM from drone images, the point cloud needs to be filtered in order to remove all the points which are situated above the earth's surface. Most of the available software packages accomplish this with algorithms performing classification on point cloud. Outcomes are often not satisfactory, which results in erroneous DEM. As an alternative solution, the author proposes image classification. The aim of the thesis is to examine the potential of image classification and judge if it could be a satisfying alternative for point cloud classification. Also, the capabilities of consumer-grade drone and drone-dedicated software are going to be evaluated. The first step in the project workflow is capturing data with the use of Phantom 3 Advanced. The photogrammetric flight is prepared having regard to drone specifications, law regulations, and objective of the survey. After the flight, the photos are processed with the use of Agisoft PhotoScan and Pix4D Mapper. Root Mean Square (RMS) for Control Points are 6.12 cm for Pix4D and 7.91 for Agisoft, which are satisfying results. Dense point clouds, DEMs and orthophotomaps are generated and point cloud classification is performed. As the orthophotomap from Pix4D has better resolution (3.36 cm), it is adopted for the process of image classification. This one is performed in ArcGIS Pro software and four classification algorithms are examined in order to choose the best one for this project. The highest accuracy is obtained by Random Trees supervised classifier (76%). Manual improvements are implemented and the map is reclassified into two classes: ground and non-ground objects. Next, the ground class is overlapped with the point cloud and points representing ground are used to generate Digital Elevation Model. DEM obtained from image classification is compared with DEM obtained from point cloud classification. For significant part of the study area the difference is smaller than 0.5 m, but for both models, problematic regions appear in the proximity of buildings and trees. The thesis presents the potential of image classification method and improvements suggested in the last chapter can be adopted for further research of the topic.


In this paper, I propose a hybrid constructivist-rationalist theory of compliance with the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and investigate its validity both quantitatively and qualitatively, based on a comprehensive database on the compliance status of all ECtHR judgments rendered up until 2010. While much research on state compliance with normative obligations has remained wedded either to a constructivist, norm-based perspective or to a rationalist analytic lens that foregrounds actor preferences and cost-benefit calculations, a fully specified model of compliance has to allow for the simultaneous operation of the logics of appropriateness and of consequences. Specifically, I argue that the question whether to comply with a judgment needs to be separated analytically from the question of how to comply. In the context of European liberal democracies, the first question is best answered by positing a normative compliance pull exerted by the judgments of a duly constituted court, even one operating beyond the boundaries of the state. At the same time, norms as well as the judgments that interpret and apply them frequently retain an element of indeterminacy that provides states with alternatives as to how to comply with a given judgment. In light of such a choice space, and given an assumed preference for the status quo ante, governments will tend to choose those institutional and interpretive options that minimize - materially and normatively - the domestic impact of an adverse judgment and will, as a result, in most cases choose narrow or otherwise restrictive compliance.


Abstract Teneral reserve components (soluble sugars, glycogen, lipids), as well as proteins, of laboratory‐reared yellow dung flies (Scathophaga stercoraria) are shown to increase hypo‐allometrically (slope < 1) with body size. This is also true for sugars and glycogen of field‐caught reproductive flies, the lipid content of which however, increases hyper‐allometrically (slope > 1), probably related to foraging or reproductive activity. The longevity, or starvation resistance, of adults subsisting exclusively on their teneral reserves equally increases with body size, and this positive relationship remains when flies have access to sugar, pollen or prey for 24 h after emergence. Energy use, by contrast, is generally not body size dependent, except for lipid (and possibly glycogen) utilization when flies were completely starved. All the results obtained are independent of sex after controlling for sexual size dimorphism. These net results clearly support the greater energy efficiency of larger flies (Kleiber's law), whereas only weak evidence is obtained in support of the contrasting hypothesis of greater absolute energy demands of larger individuals, possibly because such effects are likely masked by stronger size‐dependent anabolic effects.


The aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) is a fine-grained task that aims to determine the sentiment polarity towards targeted aspect terms occurring in the sentence. The development of the ABSA task is very much hindered by the lack of annotated data. To tackle this, the prior works have studied the possibility of utilizing the sentiment analysis (SA) datasets to assist in training the ABSA model, primarily via pretraining or multi-task learning. In this article, we follow this line, and for the first time, we manage to apply the Pseudo-Label (PL) method to merge the two homogeneous tasks. While it seems straightforward to use generated pseudo labels to handle this case of label granularity unification for two highly related tasks, we identify its major challenge in this paper and propose a novel framework, dubbed as Dual-granularity Pseudo Labeling (DPL). Further, similar to PL, we regard the DPL as a general framework capable of combining other prior methods in the literature. Through extensive experiments, DPL has achieved state-of-the-art performance on standard benchmarks surpassing the prior work significantly.


Background: COVID-19 pandemic has certainly become the most important global problem. Deficient information may increase the fear of COVID-19, affect pregnant women's psychology, and even affect breastfeeding during the postpartum period. This study aimed to assess the fear of the COVID-19 pandemic after pregnancy and its association with breastfeeding.
Methods: A cross-sectional study designed to survey all pregnant women who gave birth at ≥36 weeks between March 10 and June 10, 2020, at the Private Nisa Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey. Participants respond to questions related to sociodemographic, genealogical, pregnancy, birth information, postpartum baby care, and breastfeeding status, in addition to the 7-item Fear of COVID-19 Scale (fcv-19s) via phone. Descriptive, bivariate, and linear regression analysis was performed to predict fcv-19s. SPSS version 22.0 was used to analyze the data.
Results: A total of 906 (response rate 78.8%) respondents with a mean age of 29.59 (±4.74years) were included in the study. Most of them were highly educated (75.2%), housewives(86.1%), and living in nuclear families (96.1%). The majority of women (92.9%) gave birth at 38 weeks via cesarean section (71.7%) and breastfeeding (94.2%). Although the mean score of (fcv-19s) was high in non-breastfeeding mothers, no significant correlation was seen in bivariate analysis. In the linear regression analysis, the highly educated, good income status, having at least once follow-up a month, having a history of psychiatric disease, cesarean section delivery, competence in baby care, breastfeeding, and milk adequacy significantly predicted the (fcv-19s) (R = 0.67, R2 = 0.46, F = 42.10, p < 0.001).
Conclusions: During pandemics, including COVID-19, the psychological state of society is negatively affected, and therefore special attention must be given to the most affected groups, especially pregnant and postpartum women.


The conventional view of corporate governance is that it is a neutral set of processes and practices that govern how a company is managed. We demonstrate that this view is profoundly mistaken: in the United States, corporate governance has become a "system" composed of an array of institutional players, with a powerful shareholderist orientation. Our original account of this "corporate governance machine" generates insights about the past, present, and future of corporate governance. As for the past, we show how the concept of corporate governance developed alongside the shareholder primacy movement. This relationship is reflected in the common refrain of "good governance" that pervades contemporary discourse and the maturation of corporate governance as an industry oriented toward serving shareholders and their interests. As for the present, our analysis explains why the corporate social responsibility movement transformed into shareholder value-oriented ESG, stakeholder capitalism became relegated to a new separate form of entity known as the benefit corporation, and public company boards of directors became homogenized across industries. As for the future, our analysis suggests that absent a major paradigm shift, advocacy pushing corporations to consider the interests of employees, communities, and the environment will likely fail if such effort is not framed as advancing shareholder interests.


We develop a general framework for spatial discretisations of parabolic stochastic PDEs whose solutions are provided in the framework of the theory of regularity structures and which are functions in time. As an application, we show that the dynamical Φ3 model on the dyadic grid converges after renormalisation to its continuous counterpart. This result in particular implies that, as expected, the Φ3 measure is invariant for this equation and that the lifetime of its solutions is almost surely infinite for almost every initial condition.


One family of visual processes that has relevance for various applications of computer vision is that of, what could be loosely described as, visual processes composed of ensembles of particles subject to stochastic motion. The particles can be microscopic (e.g. plumes of smoke), macroscopic (e.g. leaves blowing in the wind), or even objects (e.g. a human crowd or a traffic jam). The applications range from remote monitoring for the prevention of natural disasters (e.g. forest fires), to background subtraction in challenging environments (e.g. outdoor scenes with moving trees in the background), and to surveillance (e.g. traffic monitoring). Despite their practical significance, the visual processes in this family still pose tremendous challenges for computer vision. In particular, the stochastic nature of the motion fields tends to be highly challenging for traditional motion representations such as optical flow, parametric motion models, and object tracking. Recent efforts have advanced towards modeling video motion probabilistically, by viewing video sequences as "dynamic textures'' or, more precisely, samples from a generative, stochastic, texture model defined over space and time. Despite its successes in applications such as video synthesis, motion segmentation, and video classification, the dynamic texture model has several major limitations, such as an inability to account for visual processes consisting of multiple co-occurring textures (e.g. smoke rising from a fire), and an inability to model complex motion (e.g. panning camera motion).
We propose a family of dynamical models for video that address the limitations of the dynamic texture, and apply these new models to challenging computer vision problems. In particular, we introduce two multi-modal models for video, the mixture of dynamic textures and the layered dynamic texture, which provide principled frameworks for video clustering and motion segmentation. We also propose a non-linear model, the kernel dynamic texture, which can capture complex patterns of motion through a non-linear manifold embedding. We present a new framework for the classification of dynamic textures, which combines the modeling power of the dynamic texture and the generalization guarantees, for classification, of the support vector machine classifier, by deriving a new probabilistic kernel based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence between dynamic textures. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of these models to a wide variety of real-world computer vision problems, including motion segmentation, video clustering, video texture classification, highway traffic monitoring, crowd counting, and adaptive background subtraction. We also demonstrate that the dynamic texture is a suitable representation for musical signals, by applying the proposed models to the computer audition task of song segmentation. These successes validate the dynamic texture framework as a principled approach for representing video, and suggest that the models could be useful in other domains, such as computer audition, that require the analysis of time-series data.


Modern resource management frameworks for largescale analytics leave unresolved the problematic tension between high cluster utilization and job's performance predictability—respectively coveted by operators and users. We address this in Morpheus, a new system that: 1) codifies implicit user expectations as explicit Service Level Objectives (SLOs), inferred from historical data, 2) enforces SLOs using novel scheduling techniques that isolate jobs from sharing-induced performance variability, and 3) mitigates inherent performance variance (e.g., due to failures) by means of dynamic reprovisioning of jobs. We validate these ideas against production traces from a 50k node cluster, and show that Morpheus can lower the number of deadline violations by 5× to 13×, while retaining cluster-utilization, and lowering cluster footprint by 14% to 28%. We demonstrate the scalability and practicality of our implementation by deploying Morpheus on a 2700-node cluster and running it against production-derived workloads.


A new kind of Hydroxyapatite (HA) composites was fabricated using a hot-press method in which carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were introduced to the HA ceramic matrix to improve the mechanical properties of the resulting composites. The CNTs were treated using a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid. A homogeneous dispersion of the CNTs in the HA matrix was achieved through dispersing them in the solution of surfactant. The bioactivity of the samples was tested. The microstructures of HA/CNT ceramic composites and the sample surfaces after immersion in SBF were characterized by SEM. The results showed that the introduction of the CNTs into HA ceramic matrix could produce positive strengthening effect without impairing the biological properties of the HA ceramic.


: The fetal position of 249 cases in their late pregnancy was detected by ultrasound. The results showed that the position of fetal spine tended to lie on the same side as mother's posture during bedrest just before examination. Fetal posterior or transverse spinal position was prone to occur when mother was on her supine position. The fetal cephalic presentation did not correspond entirely with the fetal spinal position. Eighty of the 249 cases presenting fetal spinal posterior or transverse position were chosen at random and corrected by Sims' or hand-knee posture. The better results were obtained especially by the latter. The success rate of correction by maternal posture was affected by the engagement of fetal head and the volume of amniotic fluid. The mechanism of hand-knee posture was discussed. The result indicated that maternal posturing is a clinically valuable procedure. It may be done during pregnancy or in labor to prevent fetal malpresentation.


In the last years, the Russian Federation has been in the global spotlight due to a series of assertive attitudes in his 'near abroad' and beyond. A central debate in the IR discipline and the regional studies on the Post-Soviet Space and the Middle East has been on the sources and nature of that 'new' regional and global policy. Russia used to have low profile in the Middle East during the Post-Cold War years, but the escalation in the Syria Civil War due to the imminent fall of the Al-Assad Regime provoked a critical juncture that pushed Russia to support military its ally. The article argues that Russia has recovered the great power status due to a military intervention in the Middle East which has been a spin-off of the U.S. hegemonic retreat after the failure of Iraq and the Obama's decision not to act in Syria. At the same time, Russia also has operated with an acceptable degree of military efficacy on a regional order separate from its immediate zone of interest. The new involvement provides us a significant indicator of a status upgrade since the latent capabilities become actual with the projection of military strength overseas.

Recebido em: Agosto/2018.
Aprovado em: Outubro/2018.


Using the Monte Carlo lattice-simulation technique, we present numerical evidence of the formation of gyroid and nongyroid tricontinuous cubic phases in high polymeric systems of ABC/A/C triblock copolymer and homopolymer blends. By increasing the volume fraction of homopolymer, a remarkable phase sequence G (gyroid) --> D (diamond) --> P (primitive) is observed, which is common to certain surfactant systems. Our results indicate that the ABC triblock copolymer system with blending homopolymers may be a zoo of cubic phases, suitable for comparative studies of these phases.


Despite the finding that each child and family experienced cancer in their own unique way, they all shared the need to maintain a sense of spirit. Just as the suffering united the families, so too did their sense of spirit. Talk of the spirit is not foreign in the pediatric oncology literature. Statements such as "the children's responses suggest a resolute spirit that accepts cancer and goes on with life" (Hockenberry-Eaton & Minick, 1994, p.1030) are dispersed throughout the literature and reinforce the importance of the spirit in children and families experiencing childhood cancer. Yet despite this, the spirit in children with cancer has received minimal attention from researchers (Woodgate, 2001). The focus has been solely directed at studying the sense of self in children. In fact, some would even argue that the spirit can be equated with one's sense of self. There is also the feeling that the spirit is something that does not exist. How could it be "real" when it has never been seen or even measured in research? However, just because something cannot be seen or measured, does not mean that it does not exist. As was revealed by the families participating in my study, there was a spirit within them that got them through the cancer experience, especially during times of increased symptom distress. Research that seeks to describe the "spirit within" of children and families who are going through many of life's challenges is warranted. This includes understanding the conceptualization of the spirit from the perspectives of children experiencing illness. Although understanding spirituality and spiritual distress is beginning to be studied in children experiencing illness (Pehler, 1997), children's perspectives are usually not accessed. By developing a deeper understanding of the "spirit within," oncology nurses and other professionals caring for children with cancer may be able to provide more sensitive and comprehensive care. They will have a better understanding to nursing the spirit. So to conclude, let us as oncology nurses continue to help families maintain their sense of spirit. And yes, let us maintain a sense of spirit within ourselves. We could learn from the families we care for with respect to how to nurture our spirits and the spirits of those close to us. Taking care, holding on to the belief, taking one day at a time, and so on, are all strategies that we could learn to incorporate more frequently into our daily lives. May a part of the spirits of those we care for be with us and live on in us forever, because their lingering spirits are sources of hope and strength, as this mother reinforced.


Missing data are common in studies that rely on multiple informant data to evaluate relationships among variables for distinguishable individuals clustered within groups. Estimation of structural equation models using raw data allows for incomplete data, and so all groups can be retained for analysis even if only 1 member of a group contributes data. Statistical inference is based on the assumption that data are missing completely at random or missing at random. Importantly, whether or not data are missing is assumed to be independent of the missing data. A saturated correlates model that incorporates correlates of the missingness or the missing data into an analysis and multiple imputation that might also use such correlates offer advantages over the standard implementation of SEM when data are not missing at random because these approaches could result in a data analysis problem for which the missingness is ignorable. This article considers these approaches in an analysis of family data to assess the sensitivity of parameter estimates and statistical inferences to assumptions about missing data, a strategy that could be easily implemented using SEM software.


Personal reflections by the former captain of New Zealand's world-champion "All Blacks" rugby team THERE ARE VERY few tricks for improving organizational performance left in the management deck of cards. In recent years, many eager corporate hands have played the organization redesign card; others, strategic planning; still others, value-based management. If they played them well, their companies are now fitter, stronger, more flexible, and more focused. But so too are their competitors. Sloppy strategies have been tightened; yawning skill gaps closed; troubled economies made healthy; and bloated organizations made lean. What remains -- the trump card -- is the effort to coax exceptional levels of performance from all the pieces now in place. And that means learning how to build and lead world-class -- or what McKinsey's Jon Katzenbach and Doug Smith refer to as "high-performing" -- teams.(*) I have had the good fortune to lead two such teams. I played senior club rugby in New Zealand for eight years, provincial rugby for Otago and Auckland for six, and international rugby for New Zealand for five. During that time I played with many different collections of players, about forty-five or fifty of which I would characterize as genuine teams. Of these, two were indisputably world class: the World-Cup winning All Blacks of 1987, and the Auckland team of 1985-87.(*) A third, which came very close to being world class even if it was not the best in the world, was the All Black team of 1986, which played one Test match against France and one against Australia. Teams such as these are extremely rare. They are tough to find and even tougher to build. But they do exist. They can be built. And they can be led. Anyone who has seen one in action or been fortunate enough to participate in or lead one will know it. Perhaps these teams are most easy to recognize in the world of sports because performance there is so starkly quantified and transparent. I immediately think, for example, of the Liverpool Football Club, the McLaren Formula One racing team, the San Francisco 49ers, the LA Lakers, the Australian rugby league team, and the West Indies cricket team of the 1970s and 1980s. Each of these teams, of course, was immensely successful, but that alone does not make them world class. Many other very successful, even championship, teams do not pass the test. They lack something -- some special quality of effortlessness and coherence, a wholeness that other teams, no matter how good, just do not have. Team members know and feel this difference, the presence or absence of a certain sense of ease and unshakeable confidence. Subjectively, the dividing line is painfully clear. But how can we recognize it objectively, from the outside? Signs of greatness There are, I think, three "external" qualities that indelibly mark out genuine world-class teams: * The first is a lack of mistakes. These teams seem to understand the game so well and to have practised so much that they have almost eliminated unforced errors. This is partly a result of the "divine discontent" that drives their performance, as we will see later, and partly a result of the relaxation that comes from confidence and an implicit faith in themselves. * The second is the margin of victory they achieve. World-class teams do not just scrape home; they thrash their opponents. This is hardly surprising. World-class teams are rare, so they seldom get to compete with other world-class teams. Nevertheless the margin of victory they achieve is a measure of just how much potential is waiting to be unlocked in building high-performing teams in sports and business. * The third is the charge they get from what they do. World-class teams genuinely look like they are having fun. Even in the toughest moments at training or during a match, they maintain perspective and balance. Self confidence coupled with belief in the other members fires each member of the team not only to perform, but to enjoy. …


Venetoclax (ABT-199/GDC-0199) is a selective, potent, first-in-class BCL-2 inhibitor that restores apoptosis in cancer cells and has demonstrated clinical efficacy in a variety of hematological malignancies. The objective of this analysis was to characterize the population pharmacokinetics of venetoclax and identify demographic, pathophysiologic, and treatment factors that influence its pharmacokinetics. Plasma concentration samples from 505 subjects enrolled in 8 clinical studies were analyzed using non-linear mixed-effects modeling. Venetoclax plasma concentrations were best described by a two-compartment PK model with first-order absorption and elimination. The terminal half-life in cancer subjects was estimated to be approximately 26 h. Moderate and strong CYP3A inhibitors decreased venetoclax apparent clearance by 19% and 84%, respectively, while weak CYP3A inhibitors and inducers did not affect clearance. Additionally, concomitant rituximab administration was estimated to increase venetoclax apparent clearance by 21%. Gastric acid-reducing agent co-administration had no impact on the rate or extent of venetoclax absorption. Females had 32% lower central volume of distribution when compared to males. Food increased the bioavailability by 2.99- to 4.25-fold when compared to the fasting state. Mild and moderate renal and hepatic impairment, body weight, age, race, weak CYP3A inhibitors and inducers as well as OATP1B1 transporter phenotype and P-gp, BCRP, and OATP1B1/OATP1B3 modulators had no impact on venetoclax pharmacokinetics. Venetoclax showed minimal accumulation with accumulation ratio of 1.30–1.44. In conclusion, the concomitant administration of moderate and strong CYP3A inhibitors and rituximab as well as food were the main factors impacting venetoclax pharmacokinetics, while patient characteristics had only minimal impact.


The aim of this research was to describe the experiences of a group of women about the decision making process related to illness care at home or in health care institutions. The thematic oral history method was applied. The descriptive categories were: a) The poor have their own way of taking care of health and illness; b) The main support to fight the illness is belief in God; c) Medical care is the last resource, when healing resources are not enough and the illness is dangerous. In low income families, the cultural background, associated to the socioeconomic conditions, permeate the decision with regard to taking care of the illness at home or to seek institutionalized medical care. This knowledge is essential for meaningful health care from the perspective of individuals and families.